RIVERTON, Utah – Students across the country dressed up today wore Newtown, Connecticut school colors Monday as a show of support for victims and their families.
The movement started through social media, quickly gaining support as students viewed it as a way to show their sorrow from over 2,000 miles away.
“We felt really bad for those kids and their families,” says Foothills Elementary School sixth grader Dallin Anderson. “We’ve been watching it on the news and we felt really bad.”
Foothills Elementary principal Barb Yost says she didn’t know about the effort until this morning, and is amazed by the kids’ compassion.
“They hear about things and they process them,” says Yost. “Then they do things like this where they say, ‘Hey, this is something I can do to show that I can understand and that I care.”
There was confusion amid the show of support. Some wore yellow and blue, actually Newtown High’s colors. Sandy Hook Elementary’s school colors are green and white. But students say it doesn’t matter what color they wore, the meaning is the same.
“We all go to public schools and thinking that this could happen to any public school,” says Riverton High senior Gerika Ballard.
